


The Shape of You

by Barkour



Series: Barkour sampler [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Past, Speculation, Trans Girl Pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7433267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katie called Pigeon adapts. She has to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape of You

**Author's Note:**

> More rambling, just thinkin' fic. Please see tags.

1.

_Welcome to our world,_  
Patrick Aiden Holt  
January 13, 20XX  
6 pounds, 3 ounces  
17 inches 

_Love to you from Samuel Holt & Abigail MacNeil,  
your proud father and mother_

_and from your brother, Matthew_

2.

Friday night across the desert, and curfew-busting first year cadets flooded the local town. 

"What kind of name is Pidge anyway?" Lance kicked his feet up on the diner table and stole another handful of fries from Hunk's plate. 

"What kind of name is Lance?" the kid shot back.

"Um, a great name," said Lance, "like, my moms figured the only name that suited me was if they named me Lance, like a lance slipping on through your defenses to ssszwip--" 

He dashed a flat hand forward through the air, demonstrating. The passing waitress darted sideways to avoid being thunked in the gut. 

"Watch it, caddy! And get your feet off the table," she snapped. 

Lance warmed and tucked both his legs under the table. Hunk, who, in the aisle seat, towered over Pidge, leaned down to whisper, "I think his real name's DeLancey."

Pidge snorted into a chocolate milkshake.

"Hey!" said Lance, pointing at Hunk then Pidge. "You guys want to hit the drive-in after we blow this place?"

"I'm pretty sure I have work to do," said Pidge.

"Sure, I'm up for a movie," said Hunk. "Aw, c'mon, Pidge. They're showing the Blob."

"Yeah, it's real gross and gooey," Lance said, "besides we don't have class again until Monday, what're you working on you can't wait until Sunday to rush through it?"

"I always get my engineering work done in class," Hunk said cheerfully, "that way I don't have to worry about it."

Lance eyed Pidge's milkshake tin. "Yeah, well, I like to have fun."

"I'm just trying to get through," said Pidge. Lance snorted. "We shouldn't even be out here. The last thing I want is to get in trouble with Iverson."

"Relax," Lance drawled, "like Iverson's going to bust us."

Hunk shuddered. "Man, don't say that! You'll jinx us."

Lance cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, "Come and get me, Poison Iverson!"

"Pidge, tell him to stop," said Hunk, clinging to Pidge's shoulders, "I can't survive on detention rations."

"I don't even know why you dragged me out here," Pidge said with sudden, transparent annoyance. "I never wanted to come on this stupid field trip."

Hunk leaned out of the cower, his arm still heavy and warm across Pidge's shoulders. He looked surprised, nearly as surprised as Lance, who was squinting across the table at Pidge with thin brows rumpled.

"Um," Lance said, "because we're a team?"

"Because we're friends," said Hunk.

"We don't even know each other," Pidge snapped. "How can we be friends if we don't know each other?"

"Sure we know each other!" Hunk protested. "I'm Hunk and you're Pidge and he's DeLancey."

"The what what?" said Lance. "Who's DeLancey? Did you hit your head, Hunk?"

"Solid as a rock, my man," said Hunk.

Pidge slithered out from under Hunk's arm. A prickling warmth sat in Pidge's chest, but so too did the impulse to burst and shout. 

"Whatever," Pidge said. "You guys go watch some dumb B-movie. I'm going back to the garrison."

"Awww," said Hunk, "but I wanted to talk shop with you. Lance doesn't get any of my mechanic talk."

"Boo-o-o-o-o," Lance called after Pidge. "You're leaving me alone with this guy? He's just gonna talk about fossil fuels at me."

"Believe it or not," said Pidge, "I have more important things to do than sit through some scientifically improbable movie with you two. And risk getting in trouble at the same time."

"The scientific improbability is what makes it so much fun!" said Hunk.

"Yeah!" said Lance, "and the screaming! And Steve McQueen in a ni-i-ice old blue convertible."

"Fossil fuels," said Hunk scornfully, "what a waste. You know, the damage old convertibles like that did to the environment--"

Lance grabbed another handful of french fries and shoved them at Hunk's face.

Pidge rolled eyes and said, "Just don't get caught. I'm not missing simulation training because you guys had to go to an outside theatre."

Pidge shoved out the door. The chill of evening struck, ever unexpected, and Pidge shivered and hunched. Nights in the desert were cool, unpleasant, the air dry and the winds unbroken. 

But the stars, Pidge! said Dad. You never see stars like that anywhere else. The desert is our great natural telescope: a TV dialed to space.

"Yeah, well," Pidge muttered. The radio signals were clearer here, that was true. Noise from the stars: messages from the black spaces between. I'll find you, Pidge thought. She had to.

3.

"Well, Pigeon, you took a heck of a dive," said Dad. 

Patrick, arm in a cast and sling, giggled tiredly. Pain distended that wide mouth into a small, cramped frown. 

Mom said, "Let's get him inside. How about you sleep downstairs with me tonight?"

"Okay," said Patrick as Dad hefted the four year old out of the car seat. Patrick had always been small, slighter even than Matt, and the ease with which he could lift Patrick was startling.

Patrick made a little pained sound. Dad made shushing noises and Mom hurried to get the front door open. Matt carried Mom's purse out of the car and the paper pharmacy bag. 

"Hey, you okay, Pidge?" Matt asked. He dogged Dad's steps and reached to tug at Patrick's dangling fingers. "You okay?"

"Stop," Patrick fussed, "lemme alone."

"He's gonna be okay?"

"Patrick'll be fine," said Dad. "It's just a broken arm. You heard the doctor."

"Yeah, I know, but..."

They sidled in through the opened door into the dimly lit entryway. Mom had turned the lights on back to the master bedroom, on the main floor.

"Here, I'll take Patrick," she said.

"Not Patrick!" said their noisy Pigeon, stirring again and with an unintended violence. Dad narrowly evaded the cast. "I'm Katie!"

"Who's Katie?" said Matt.

"I'm Katie!" said Patrick. Mom hefted Patrick in her arms.

"What's that about?" asked Dad. He was looking with curiosity at Patrick, scowling now and fretful, eyes over bright.

Mom sighed and patted Patrick's back very gently. "It's... Something we need to talk about. Later." She glanced significantly at Matt. 

More loudly Matt said, "What is it? Who's Katie?"

"So," said Dad, bending to look Patrick in the eye. He smiled lopsidedly at their second child, their curious Pigeon. "No more Tina?"

"You, too?" said Mom, with great relief. "Patrick asked me to use Jessica a year ago, but then it was Jenny, and Lola..."

"Ya little stinker," Dad teased. He twitched her nose between finger and thumb, and Katie snuffled away, frowning again. "So, Katie, huh? Not going to pick Frankie tomorrow?"

"Do not give her any ideas," Mom said. She tested the word on her tongue, that her. Did it fight? Was it right? She supposed that was up to Patrick: to Katie. "I'm not calling any -- daughter of mine Frankie."

"Who is Katie?" Matt demanded, dropping both the purse and the pharmacy bag. 

"Oh, Matt, don't drop the meds," said Mom, "I need to go through those. Jeff, honey--"

"Don't worry, you go on and put Pidge down," said Dad, "I'll get your things to you."

"But why won't anyone tell me?" 

Mom hustled the squirming kiddo to the master bedroom, where the comforter and sheets were turned back and ready.

Dad looked to the heavens and thought. Well, Matt was still a kid too and not as pig-headed as the Older Folks, like Mom and Dad each thinking it a phase. It was the sort of thing he'd have to fix if he meant to do right by their kids, and he meant to. 

"Katie is your sister," said Dad. "Well, Patrick is Katie. That makes sense to you?"

"Oh," said Matt. He shrugged. "Okay. If Pidge is sleeping with Mom does that mean you're gonna sleep in the bunk too?"

"You know it, space ranger," said Dad. "And I'm gonna fart all night."

"Gross," said Matt. "Mom! Make Dad sleep on the couch!"

"Jeff!" yelled Mom. "Sleep on the couch!"

"Darn," said Dad, "routed again."

Smug, Matt handed Dad both purse and meds and turned to leave. At the stairs, though, he stopped and looked at Dad with wonder bright upon him.

"Wait," he said, "if Pidge's a girl does that mean I get my own room?"

"We'll talk about it in the morning," said Dad.

"I want my own room!" said Matt. "She always breaks my robots!"

"She's taking them apart to figure out how they work," Dad said, "you know if you helped her reprogram them then it could be a good bonding exercise for the two of you."

"No way," said Matt, "she breaks them, she fixes 'em."

And fix them Katie did. A week after the cast came off she cobbled together two stripped apart robots and conquered the stairs with a rudimentary home-made anti-grav. 

"I'm taking the both of you to space with me," Dad proclaimed over breakfast.

Matt punched the air. So did Katie, who also held her robot over her head and yelled.

"Oh, and I'll just stay here all alone," said Mom. "Just me and the dog."

"And Rover," Katie said sweetly, offering Mom the robot.

Mom sighed and accepted the robot. "Me and the dog and Rover."

"Don't worry," Matt said, "we'll call you. From space."

"You better," said Mom, and Dad smiled at this family, their family. Here we all are and aren't we happy.

4.

The hair, first. That was the easiest. Then she traded her contacts out for glasses, the glasses she'd thrown in a case at the back of her closet. Forging the digital identity documents, that was cake. 

It was the medication she studied for a long time, thinking. This is who I am, Katie thought. Then she thought: I'm a girl, I am a girl, it doesn't matter what my body looks like or what anybody else thinks. I'm still a girl. 

Consider the facts. The garrison conducted weekly room checks, not actively seeking contraband but seizing it where found. Iverson and thus the staff of the base knew of Katie Holt. If she started weaning off it now, then...

The girl in the mirror looked at Katie with bruised eyes and a sharp-edged brow.

"It doesn't matter what you look like," Katie said fiercely to her reflection. She'd shorn her hair at a savage angle. The glasses, huge for her face, made her look younger somehow.

But she remembered being twelve, and how peculiarly and wondrously free she had felt after the last surgery, even through the pain and the itching and the dizzying fog of the analgesic medication. No more surgeries, no more knives and bright lights blinding in her eyes. No more breathing deep of gas and thinking, this time, this time. 

"Katie," Mom called up the stairs. Her voice was worn. "Sweetheart? I'm ordering take-out. I'm too tired to cook tonight..."

She closed her vanity drawers and forced a smile for her reflection. Even this was wrong: it had none of the sneaky edge her smiles liked.

"It's okay, Mom," said Katie brightly. "How about sushi? I'd like sushi."

Katie stood. She brushed off her skirt and shook the pleats in place. "I'm doing this for Mom, too," Katie told her reflection. Mom would be teaching for the semester in Italy, so she wouldn't even notice Katie was gone for a couple weeks, maybe longer if she assumed Katie was safe at school.

She stared hardly at the mirror, at the person who looked back at her. This is me, she thought. This is who I have to be to find them. It was a coldness that was on her, an analytical certainty. Pidge would take it apart and remake it. 

5.

_Come celebrate Katie Holt's 5th Birthday with us_  
_this Saturday @ 4:30PM at the  
Columbia Park Swimming Pool!_

_We can't wait to see you!_

(In a child's scrawl beneath: Katie. Beneath this, a more precisely drawn caricature of a square and smiling robot.) 

6.

Lance spotted Pidge in a corner of the mess hall, hunched in front of a laptop with headphones on. Didn't the kid ever take a break? Lance sighed and added a second slice of cobbler to his tray. 

"Hey," he said as greeting. 

Lance nudged Pidge in the side with his knee, and Pidge startled, jerking the headphones back. It knocked the glasses askew. 

"Brought you some cobbler." He set the paper bowl down by Pidge and produced a plastic fork with a showy twist of the wrist.

Pidge eyed him as Lance, noisily sighing and muttering about the poor quality of mess hall food, took up the rest of the table bench.

"Why?"

Lance shrugged. "'Cause we're friends. And you look down."

Pidge looked crabby. "How would you know?"

Lance made a show of stroking his chin. "Hmmm. Maybe because I've been here longer than you, and, over my many years, and in my great wisdom, I've come to recognize when somebody's homesick?"

Pidge looked away, hunching over the laptop again. "I'm not homesick."

"Got you an OJ, too." Lance jabbed a straw in his own juice pack. "Hey, no shame in being homesick. I'm homesick basically all the time. I have six sisters! And nobody here knows anything about hygiene! Do you have any idea how many times Hunk's puked on me in the sim?"

Chattering away worked. A glimmer of a long and sneaky smile pulled at Pidge's mouth. Pidge pushed the glasses back up.

"Five times," Pidge said. "I was there for all of them. Remember?"

"He's never puked on you."

"It's like they don't know how showers even work," Pidge complained. "I'm tired of all the smells."

"At least you have your own room," said Lance. "I have to share with _Miguel_. When he takes his dirty socks off, you know what he does? He just throws them!" Lance gestured broadly. "Doesn't even care where they land! For example on my face!"

Pidge made a gratifyingly disgusted noise. "My brother would--" Then Pidge stopped.

"Ha!" said Lance, chomping down on a bite of his own slice of cobbler. "I knew you didn't hatch out of a supercomputer."

Huffing, Pidge stabbed the fork into the cobbler. "It doesn't matter."

"Sure it does," said Lance, spraying crumbs. He wiped at his mouth, sheepish, and swallowed. "Family's, like, the most important thing there is. I wouldn't be the handsome, charming guy you see here today if it wasn't for my moms."

Pidge continued stabbing idly at the cobbler. "You have six sisters?"

"Yup, and I'm right in the middle," said Lance. "Sisters are amazing. I'd hate having brothers, so you can keep yours."

A hand up, blocking eyes, Pidge fiddled with the glasses. Lance looked sidelong at 'em. He could push, he supposed, but Hunk was better at that sort of thing. 

"Where is Hunk?" Lance wondered, looking about the mess hall. "He's usually lecturing the cafeteria staff about preparing meat by now."

"He had to stay behind in engineering," said Pidge, surprising Lance. "Professor Gilligan was really impressed with his work re-rigging the Melle engine to use solar energy as a back-up fuel source."

Lance looked, astonished, at Pidge. "Well, well. Look at you! Knowing things about people. Hey, I might start thinking you like us."

Pidge snorted and gave Lance a suitably withering look. Lance was suitably unwithered. 

"Anyway, what're you looking at? Bunch of numbers?"

"I'm just studying radio signals." Pidge fiddled with the keyboard. "Analyzing the data. I'm trying to see if I can translate certain frequencies, mathematically."

"Well, you lost me," said Lance, "but thanks for sharing. I've already learned more today about you than I have all semester."

Pidge closed the laptop and, rolling eyes, drew the bowl of cobbler nearer. "Just try to keep it to yourself."

"Oh, no," said Lance, "I'm definitely telling everyone that you're a giant dweeb. Analyzing radio signals?" He scoffed.

The shocks continued: Pidge very nearly grinned at this. They ate wolfishly together, Pidge stealing bits of Lance's frankly disgraceful cubano sandwich. 

"You know," Lance said, mouth full, "if you ever want to talk about your family... Or home... You can always talk to Hunk."

"What about you?" Pidge raised an eyebrow. 

"I'm way too busy with girls," said Lance, "you know how the ladies love me. Ladies love Lance. If you were a girl," he added, "you'd understand."

Pidge, laughing, had to spit out a wad of bread and meat. 

7.

Mom relinquished the huge conference screen to Katie. The signal required to establish a two-way video feed between Earth and the shuttle was such that it necessitated long car trips to the garrison.

The screen lagged a moment then steadied, and Matt was there, floating in the small communications compartment of the shuttle, his glasses wire-hooked over his ears.

Matt yelled, "Pidge!" and she yelled, "Matt!" and they laughed at each other. 

"Did you use the subroutines I programmed? How did they work?"

"We're looping Jupiter tomorrow to slingshot farther out--"

"Are you running daily diagnostics, because I need to look over everything--"

"You wouldn't believe some of the stuff we're receiving out here, Dad thinks--"

"But do you have any hard proof?" she argued. "You need real evidence if anyone's going to believe aliens are real--"

"Carl Sagan wrote that the probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life--"

"The Drake equation is conjectural; it isn't mathematically sound--"

A new and deeper sounding laugh crackled over the feed. Matt darkened and hooked a hand in the wall netting, tugging himself to the side to make room for the crew pilot. Takashi Shirogane grinned at Matt and at Pidge. 

"Hello, sir," said Pidge, as she had the one time she'd met him before the launch. 

"Call me Shiro," said Shirogane with ready humor. "You two always this chatty?"

"Always," said Dad heavily. He too came into view. "Hey, how's my girl doing?"

"I'm fine, Dad," said Katie. "Got my classes sorted out for spring semester."

"MIT, right?" said Shirogane. "The Holt family continues to impress."

Pleased, Katie folded her arms and smiled. Matt groaned and said, "Her ego already dwarfs the known universe."

She faked a punch and Matt, who abhorred physical confrontation, faked cowering before sticking his tongue out at her. Shirogane laughed again. He'd an easy manner to him, a friendly look.

"You thinking about coming up here next time?" the pilot asked. "I hear you're an ace with tech."

Katie pulled a face. "Nah. I'm more interested in tech applications down here on Earth."

"Pidge is an environmentalist," Matt informed Shirogane. "Which is weird because I don't think she's ever gone outside without a computer."

"So," Dad interrupted, "what're you taking in spring?"

Katie talked classes for the next semester and her winter break project, another try at a self-policing, evolving artificial intelligence program. Dad figured they were about four months out from Kerberos. Talk of the intercepted radio signals led to pronounced excitement from all the Holts, with Shirogane absenting himself from the scene.

It was an hour, perhaps, then the time was up. They needed to alter the shuttle's flight path and to do so would sever the connection.

"We love you," Katie said, and Mom echoed her. 

"I love you, Pidge!" Matt made a heart with his hands and Pidge shuddered.

Mom said, "I guess fly safe!"

"Takashi's just about the best pilot I've ever known," Dad said. "He can fly circles around every showboat at the garrison."

Iverson, at the back of the room, grunted sourly.

Good-byes lingered. Dad moved to end the connection.

"Wait," said Pidge suddenly, and he looked to her. Matt, too. "I-- I miss you guys."

"We miss you too, kiddo."

"I wish you were here, too, Pidge," Matt said, "you wouldn't believe how clear the stars look."

"And hey, I want to hear about that project of yours."

"Maybe next time you can use it for the rovers," Katie suggested.

"Well, why not," said Dad. He smiled at her. "Love you, Pidge. I love you, too, Abigail."

Mom blew them a kiss. Pidge waved. The screen blanked out. She imagined she could still see them there, looking back at her from the stars; but they were gone.

8\. 

_KERBEROS MISSION DISASTER, CREW FEARED LOST  
"We still have hope for their safe return," says Dr MacNeil, wife of mission commander_

9.

Like a drop of water into an empty bowl:

"Katie," said Shiro, and he put his arm around her.

We'll find them. 

10.

_KERBEROS CREW DECLARED DEAD._

_[...]_

_Commander Samuel Holt and Lieutenant Matthew Holt are survived by Abigail MacNeil, wife and mother, and Kate Holt, daughter and sister._

11.

Katie supposed it was fear was why she said nothing. Fear she would be discovered, then fear she would be rejected. It hadn't mattered to anyone else in a very long time, not since she was six or seven and teachers still called her Patrick, kids asked why she wore skirts if she was a boy. 

A movement at her shoulder, as she reviewed Green's schematics. Green hummed an impression to her of a boy, too tall, brown, very loud: the color blue. 

"Hey," said Lance. He cleared his throat.

Pidge pulled in a breath and, jaw set, she looked up at him. He'd a hand at his nape, rubbing it, and he said, "So, uh, Katie, huh?"

"Yep," she said.

"And you're a girl," he said.

"That would also be a yep," she said.

Lance closed his eyes. Both his hands fisted, the one at his chest and the other behind his head.

"Why," he said lowly, passionately, "didn't you say anything before I streaked naked through the garrison?"

Pidge stared, wide-eyed and soft-jawed, at Lance as he shivered, and then, perhaps unkindly, she barked a laugh.

"I ran by your room five times!" he yelled. "Your door was open! I bragged about my dick to you!"

"I know what a dick looks like," Pidge protested, still laughing and louder now. A new confidence came to her, and she said, somewhat recklessly, "I used to have one."

"We're not talking about that," Lance wailed, "we're talking about my dick, that I made you look at!" He collapsed to the floor.

Hunk wandered in from the hall and glanced at Lance, now clutching at his face and moaning.

"What's with him?"

"He's upset because I've seen his dick," said Pidge.

"Oh, that thing," said Hunk. "We've all seen your dick, Lance. And, uh, we're all really impressed." Hunk set a plate of (yum, yum) food goo on the little work desk. "Here, got you a snack, Kate."

"Pidge," she said, "you can call me Pidge. And why does everyone keep trying to feed me?"

"Because you're so tiny," Hunk said. "You're so widdle."

Pidge conceded this. "Just like Lance's--"

"Let's stop discussing my dick," said Lance, popping up, "before someone says something they're going to regret."

Keith's voice preceded him: "Why are we discussing Lance's dick?"

"He showed it to me," Pidge said. 

Keith gave Lance a look askance, and Lance said, "It's not like it sounds! Don't stink eye me, Keith!"

"It's okay," Hunk assured Keith, "he shows it to everyone."

"I haven't seen his dick," said Keith, wary.

"Hey, why don't you show Keith your dick?" Pidge suggested.

Lance shot to his feet. "Pidge!"

"That's all right," said Keith, holding his hands out in the universal cease fire position to Lance. "I'm fine. I don't know why you're so bent on showing off your penis, though. That's kind of weird."

"It is very weird," Hunk agreed.

Lance said loudly, "Okay, can we please stop talking about this and instead everyone tells Pidge how much we all love and support her?"

"Or," said Pidge, "you guys could leave me alone so I can _finish my work_ ," but she was smiling as she said it, smiling and even somehow happy in this moment as Keith laughed at Lance and Hunk talked about his plans to get some spices for the kitchen and Katie thought, yeah, maybe it would all turn out okay.

12.

_Search efforts for Katie Holt, aged 15, continue though many close to the investigation report that hopes the missing teen will be found alive are dwindling. The daughter of Commander Samuel Holt of the ill-fated Kerberos mission, Katie was first reported missing in June by her mother, Abigail MacNeil. She was last seen in May at their residence in Clovis, New Mexico._


End file.
